Brand new to aging beer

Try doing a search first, you'll find this question answered like 800 times before. There's another thread on this same topic on the front page of the forum.

 

Big stouts, Barleywines, quads, sours ect. Stay away from hop forward beers. 120 is an exception. I use the 8% rule. Keep them out of light and away from temp fluctuations. Mark them somehow so you know how long you are aging. From personal experience I have had pretty good luck with aging.

 

If there were a sticky for this and another that is some kind of list of beers that age well, it could answer these persistent questions. Granted that would eliminate 90% of the threads in the Cellar forum, but at least people could talk about specific experiences and give advice...

 

Just picked up the Unibroue Grand Reserve 17 and want to age it for a while. It is under cork. How best to store it? Standing or laying down? Any other tips? Thanks, Tetley.

 

Stand them up! I don't age my beers on their side because
1. Increases the surface area exposed to the air in the bottle
2. Corks don't dry out
3. They are almost all bottle conditioned, yeast ring ftl.

As for what to age, I agree with 8% and up, and I go for malty beers as well. The only. Exception for me with the abv rule is with saisons, brett beers, or lambics. Anything with bugs that is bottle conditioned will do well like orval, gi sofie, saison dupont, etc.

 

8% rule works with most beers, not with sours. If the acidity is high then the ABV is not a big concern. Age them how you want, I age 90% of my beers upright but I age my lambics/gueuzes/krieks on their side like wine. Find beers that taste like they might need some time...maybe they're a little rough around the edges or the flavors are just a little too much. There are many reasons for aging.

And I realize it's sort of an experiment so try the 120min. whenever you want, but IMO it doesn't age well at all. 120min. is great fresh, after that it gets very sweet and loses that awesome hop character. Good luck!

 

We age wine laying down to keep the corks moist. They do dry out and crumble. Are we sure we want to age the beers standing?

 

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/101/store

provides a pretty good discussion on this website about why you would age a beer upright and why you needn't concern yourself with keeping the cork moist so much as keeping the cork away from your delicious beer.

 

Ah the old standing up vs sitting down debate, complete with the same bullshit about surface area to air and corks. There is no definitive evidence that either is better actually the only evidence I have seen or read is that it does not matter how you store the beer as long as the temperature is constant.

 

I have seen yeast rings settle onto the sides of bottles, and I would rather leave the yeast out of my pours. That, my friend, is not a bullshit reason to prefer standing them up.

 

Fair enough. I personally have never seen yeast rings or experienced them but from what I have heard as long as you stand the beer up for a day or two before you drink it the yeast ring dissipates back into the beer (as it should) and its fine again. Living in Houston where we have no basements and the summers are in the high 90s and 100s regularly, my options are limited to having a wine rack or low temperature refrigerator and you can't always stand every bottle up, so I have done a good amount of research on the subject.

Store the beers as best as you can, if laying them down is the best available to you then lay them down.

 

You have to turn a beer sideways to pour it if it's stored upright, so you're going to agitate yeast either way.

 

I've only had it become an issue with fantome. Go figure.